M. Rubio

Friday, December 22, 2017

Do you have those random little stories that you just think about once in a while? Simple stories, but have a personal set of layers to them?
I have this story that I think about at least once a year, and yet I never really told anyone about it. I always just think about it, giggle, and continue on my merry way.
This is the story.
So back in Middle School, there was the annual talent show. I am sure this is not uncommon in most public Middle Schools. It was an event that had the sole purpose of letting kids get out class for an hour while they watched their peers embarrassed themselves. This does not apply to the popular kids who will get applauded even if they were failing to masturbate.

I surprisingly remembered a lot of the acts of these talent shows. I remember a girl I hated did nothing but
cartwheels for five minutes. A girl who sang Halo by Beyoncé while swinging her
arms in the air, in an attempt to coerce the audience to do the same, during every chorus, and I mean EVERY chorus. A guy who parodied Souja Boy with Bacon Boy. A short Latino and a tall black guy hip hop dancing which ends with them throwing their hats to the crowd. Of course, they asked for their hats back.
This is just to name a few to illustrate the brilliant talent oozing out of Smylie Wilson Middle School from 2007 to 2009.
Anyway, I am sitting there in the middle of the auditorium. I don't remember if I was analyzing the auditorium's architecture, daydreaming, or something, but I was at least sitting there. Then they announced this next kid, and he comes out. He was a skinny white kid. He would look like a fourth grader if his pained face caused by Middle School trauma wasn't etched on his face. He stood stilted on the center stage, and the music began to play.
Now at the time, I wasn't too familiar with Michael Jackson, so I paid no mind to his single glove and his Smooth Criminal get up.
I wasn't until the music started to kick in that I noticed what he was trying to do. And I noticed, with a gaping mouth so wide my soul could crawl out.
This kid was performing a Michael Jackson song, not just singing or dancing, but performing. Yes, he did both, and it was awful.Part of it was stage fright. There
was absolute terror in his eyes as he tried to sing some Michael
Jackson, while doing, to my knowledge, only two dance moves (it was a spin and a
pose).

I frankly don’t even remember if he
finished the act or ran out in embarrassment. All I could take from the
performance was pure secondhand embarrassment and the assurance that at least I
wasn’t the only one suffering through the worst Middle School has to offer.

But the story isn't over.

No the reason I remember this performance so well was this black kid sitting a few rows down from me watching the same thing I was. As the poor kid left the stage, the black kid turned to his friends behind him where I could see his depressed face. Without one shred of hesitation, he dispiritedly said "I hate white people."

I honestly don't know what to get from this story. It personally cracks me up every time I think about it for how surreal that whole experience was. I just needed to archive this story in some fashion, and so here I am. I guess I think about it on occasion because despite every horrible thing my anxiety makes me remember, it cannot convince me that any of those things are worse than trying to perform Michael Jackson in a Middle School talent show.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Whenever people ask me what I am, my canned answer tends to
be writer. It’s short, it’s a good conversation starter, and ladies start
thinking of Hemingway, and he was a sexy fella.

The problem with
being called a writer though is that the word writer has a sort of gravitas to
it. There are some heavy connotations to something that is very pedestrian in
meaning.

A writer, at its
core, is a person who expresses their ideas into an oral or written format. That’s
it. To me, that is all it will ever be. However, scanning around the English
department, talking to other writers, and listening to readers read their work
at art events, I get uncomfortable about what it is to be a writer.

Here is a thing
about me, I hate when people compliment my work, even when they are being genuine.
Part of it, in fact probably all of it, is that I’m insecure. I hate when
people use the same vocabulary to describe my work as they would a George
Carlin joke or a Tupac lyric. I don’t see myself in that league. I don’t see my
ideas as sacred or a movable feast (that’s a Hemingway reference).

Like for example, I
was talking to these two girls from my Creative writing class, and they started
discussing some of the work I presented in class. They analyze the form, my
deliberate word choice, and creative premises. I should have been flattered,
but I was left disconcerted.

This lead me to
think of my Creative Writing professor. I remember her, after hearing a piece I
wrote, delving into terminology I didn’t even consider when writing. Like
what the fuck is form dividing into structure or something? I honestly don’t
even remember what she said I was so taken aback.

There is also the
running trend that my most praised work is also the work I worked the least
amount of time on, admittedly some of my favorite pieces I’ve written tend to
have had a short turnout.

I think of the
writers and lyricists who spent years on a piece, and here I am getting praise
from a piece I wrote from a writing exercise. I feel like I don’t deserve it.

I say this with the
firm knowledge of how hypocritical this sounds to people that know me as a
writer. I hate being praised, but whenever I get criticized I get defensive. I
hated being praised but I hate seeing my work being dragged through of the mud
of constructive, and sometimes nonconstructive, criticism. At least I have the
self-awareness to know that it will benefit me as a writer in the long run,
even after a twenty-minute argument with a colleague.

I think when it all comes down to it, I have
an indifferent opinion of art.

The way I define
art is any form of expression. An absolute definition, and I usually don’t describe
anything with absolutes. The reason being is that absolutes either make something
too grand, too horrific, or too insignificant. When everything is special, nothing
is. And when everything is art, nothing is art.

I am a person! A
normal person. I like word search puzzles and flavored chap stick. I develop
crushes on girls, I get bitter when I am hungry, and sleeping is my favorite
part of the day.

Do you want to know
how I write? I pour a glass of sweet tea or soda, put some words on a document
that I think are interesting, walk around my house when my legs start cramping,
and go back to my desk to start the process all over again. There is no profound
ritual when I write. I don’t write in a hipster coffee shop or in a
bustling location. I don’t pour a glass of my personal vice to drown my sorrows
away. I have porn for that!

I guess that’s the lesson.
I mention Hemingway, Carlin, and Tupac, but they were normal too. Yet I deify
these people for their excellent work, because I personally connect with their
specific expressions.

In other words, art
can also be defined as your subjective and personal blah blah blah I don’t even
know what I am saying anymore. This paragraph totally contradicted what I said
earlier.

This entry is
getting rambly. I am going nowhere, and I don’t think I need a simile to
visualize it.

I might as well sit
in bed, listen to the beauty of Storms of Life, and maybe watch some new
episodes of Bo Jack Horseman. That reminds me, I need to do an entry revolving around
Todd. That should be fun.

Friday, September 1, 2017

“This entry is brought to you by Paul Hunton. Paul Hunton
will give you the creative knowledge you need, as well as the extra credit if
you go to the First Friday Art Trail. Go to Texas Tech University and enter the
promo code, whyme, and you too might
sound like a Pixar character that is Paul Hunton.”

But in all
seriousness, I had an interesting time at the First Friday art festival, or
else I wouldn’t be writing about it.

Full disclosure before
I actually begin, I ultimately find festivals like these to be really important.
Art festivals, at their core, are culturally necessary for a strong community
and for strong forms of expression. Lubbock, or any city, would lose a part of
their soul without them. You would be ignorant to say they have no part in our
society, regardless if you like them or not. But enough of that, on with the trashing.

If I were to give
advice for people thinking about going to an art festival such as the FFAT, it
would be go before it gets mainstream. I spent about ten minutes finding a
parking, and ended up parked by a railroad track. I parked in front of a no
trespassing sign and wondered if it was worth it. I was also wondering if I was
breaking the law. I got out of the car and looked at a guy not parked but
waiting in his car. He wasn’t moving but occasionally checked his phone, so I was assuming he was waiting for a
drug deal. First Friday Blaze Trail, am I right?

I walked to LHUCA
to attend a screening of Ken Burn’s new documentary of Vietnam. I sat for a few
minutes, enjoying it, and then realized it was only an excerpt. Once the
excerpt to episode one ended, it jumped straight into an excerpt of episode
three. My OCD ass couldn’t take that shit, so I walked out.

At that point, I
figure I do what I love most and explore a little.

This leads me to my
two-part second piece of advice, if you want to really learn about yourself, go
to an art festival alone.

I’ll tell you what
I learned, I have a contentious opinion when it comes to art. I walked into a
room with only paintings of squares and dots and immediately walked out. I walked
into another room and saw “my artistic statement” followed by a lengthy
paragraph and immediately turned around. If you have to preface your art
gallery with a statement explaining your point, you already failed as an
artist.

The only one that I
liked, and I regret not remembering the name of the work or the artist, is a
painting of two men sitting on a couch while one is holding a narwhal. It
caught the eyes. It makes you ask yourself questions. It’s the only thing that
came to mind when I am writing this entry. Actually, one other thing that comes to mind was the cover band singing CCR while a girl exclaimed to the guy next
to her, “it’s supposed to be symbolic.”

“Why do people come
to art festivals?” I ask myself, as I watch a group of teenage girls take a
basic picture in front of a red door. I started going through the cynical
answers. They are pseudo intellects, they have an excuse to get drunk outside, or they are here for the extra credit like me. My brain and anxiety started seeing
the fakeness. It was the first time where I disliked people-watching. I started
seeing them as squares and dots instead of people. I started to get bored, only
the beauty of the Texas sunset mixed with the Lubbock modesty kept me from leaving.

I slowly stopped
approaching people I knew from my past and present, which I almost never do.
People from Tech, SPC, and even people before then. I a
guy from high school, a girl I had a crush on in third grade, and a kid from my high school film analysis class who smoked too much pot and didn’t have the
intelligence to pull off a decent academic career.

Long story short, after meandering for thirty minutes, I learned that diminishing
returns comes quick to me when it comes to socializing, that I don’t like art
forced onto me, and I am not a fan of crowds.

I asked myself if
there was optimistic answer to my proposed question, and I could only think of
one besides the obvious you genuinely like the art. But in that case, you're as weird as the guys who watch volleyball for the action.

The reason you like going to art festivals is because you are with someone else.

This leads me to my second part of my second piece of advice, if you want to really enjoy an art
festival, don’t go alone.

I saw families
laughing and bantering. I saw lovely couples and friends. I eventually ran into
two buddies I knew from SPC who made the experience a lot more palatable. They
really helped ease my mind since they had almost the exact same opinion I had of
the festival. It was also nice catching up with familiar faces. Unfortunately, I
didn’t stay long with them.

Later in the
evening, I ran into another group of friends. Well I was friends with three of
them, the other three I just met. If I had to describe them, it would be like
if the cast of Zoey 101 came to life and decided to go to an art festival. This
idea was cemented when I brought up this comparison which lead them to have a
ten-minute argument on which character from Zoey 101 they would be.

But whatever, they
were charming, wonderful people and it was great meeting them.

I ended up leaving around 9 o’clock for two reasons. One, because I wanted to write.
And two, because I was horrifically thirsty and personal principles keep me
from buying $2 water.

This leads me to my
final piece of advice… bring a water bottle.

But I had fun. I know I did because I spent
more than 1000 words talking about it. I experienced, I laughed, and most of
all learned that everyone are squares and dots, but you learn not to care. Nah I'm just kidding. I learned the Zoey 101 character I would be is Lola.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Last night I did my usual pace across my house. I was
staring at my phone to what would be Donald Trump as the next president. I felt
hopeless. I was trying to find a silver lining, but just couldn’t.

It was at this point that I went
into introspection, because ironically the dark recesses of my mind felt a lot
safer than reality.

What I found was
something I never thought I find. It wasn’t terror. It wasn’t anger. It
was…relief.

Not to the kind of
relief that you get from your candidate winning but a relief you get when you
are in a Zen-like state.

I started thinking
about the time I drove to Levelland during a heavy rain. At one point the rain
started to get so heavy that I couldn’t see for a couple minutes. I was also
driving at high speeds, so there was a possibility that I may crash. I felt my
mortality thinking about that. I truly thought I was going to die. But after
enduring a very scaring two minutes, I was okay. The rain stopped and I got to
my destination.

I felt the same
feelings today. Despite Trump winning, I am still walking and talking, which
made me realize a very important lesson. Something I was aware of, but now has
a newfound meaning thanks to today. This story will not overshadow the day when
the sun engulfs the Earth.

People will claim
the end of the world if a certain thing happens. I’ve been seeing this a lot
with this election. “If Trump wins it will be the end of 21st
century society.” “If Clinton wins it will be the end of honesty or whatever.”

But history has
dealt with a lot worst. We had genocides, Civil Wars, religious schisms. We had
tyrants, diseases, and extinctions. Yet all of that is but a scar, not the
killing blow to humanity. And that’s what Trump is; a scar. He will come and
go, and life will move on. He might do some damage, some horrible damage, but
we will heal.

For the first time, I felt the true
beauty of being insignificant. That I am nothing but a micro speck in the
universe.

It was this
thinking that I accidentally found a sort of semi-remedy for my anxiety. Here I
am worried about the scars and the wounds. I'm worried that they might kill me.
Now, having faced a horrible scar, I am okay. I am still me; nothing has
changed. I still crack jokes. I still try to give my friends as much attention
as I possibly can. I still think like a demisexual and as a Catholic. I still
have an urge to tell stories. What am I so worried about?

Now again this
remedy might be temporary. It can still easily take one thing to bring back the
insecurities that I have been dealing with since Middle School. But as of right
now, my anxiety is almost nonexistent, and I am trying to make the most of it.

Like today after class I applied for a job. I was sheepish
at first, considering I have a lot on my plate as is, but I did it. I am just waiting
for the website to bloody submit the application.

I met with Obi for a brief moment and met his pre-med
friends. They seem like nice people. After the TASEM meeting I went to see Hand
Maiden for the College Cinephile and experience the Alamo Drafthouse for the
first time! I never thought I’d say that I got to see an Asian erotica while
eating a burger with bacon in it.

I come home feeling alright, albeit a little bloated from the aforementioned meal. I found new meaning in “the Lord moves in mysterious ways.” I
found a new approach to calming my anxiety, or shall we say, scars. I found a
hint of meaning in life even with it being obvious in retrospect.

I am a little more
complete than I was yesterday. I hope people get something similar.